The Original Sin of America’s Post-9/11 Wars

From time to time, WhoWhatWhy discovers compelling voices you haven’t heard anywhere before. Here, we present U.S. Army Captain Danny Sjursen’s cutting analysis of U.S. wars since 9/11. It’s a timely reflection on the costs of freedom, and a major part of our national story now, 238 years after we declared independence.

What makes Sjursen’s perspective so intriguing is that he is, by all definitions, a model Army officer: West Point graduate in the top 10 percent of his class, decorated veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and soon, a history lecturer at the U.S. Military Academy. A native of Staten Island, he lost eight friends and family members—all firefighters—in the collapse of the Twin Towers. He’s the author of the forthcoming book “Surge of Candor: Reflections on Soldiers, Service and the War in Iraq”.

Here, Sjursen is writing as himself and the views are his own, not those of the government or the Army that still employs him. What this cavalry officer says about our wars will surprise you, whether you agree or not.

***

Maybe the American people get the wars they deserve. Or is that too harsh?

Perhaps much of the blame for our continuing Century of War lies with the bill of goods we were sold by well-funded, fundamentalist ideologues in that perfect storm of incompetence known as the Bush administration. It’s been 13 years since the Twin Towers crumbled in my hometown, nearly seven since I returned from my first war, and still I’m torn on the issue.

Here’s a fact: the United States military possesses finite resources. Despite the rhetoric many of us were raised on—that of perpetual growth, unipolar power, and undiminished potential—our armed forces have serious limitations. Our constraints include capability, funding, and willpower.

It’s true that American soldiers and marines have fought, and died, with great poise, professionalism, and courage. I’ve witnessed it first-hand. But that doesn’t change one salient truth: we haven’t won in either Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s worth asking why, before we embark on any more overseas military ventures.

1) CAPABILITY: Superior firepower is not always decisive. Dedicated, if technologically inferior, insurgents creatively equipped with equalizing weaponry, foreign support, porous borders and resolve have successfully bogged down our ground forces not once, but twice, in the last decade.

2) FUNDING: Despite a defense budget higher than most of the rest of the world combined, the recent U.S. Army budget hearings on Capitol Hill made clear that the army will be forced to shrink to its smallest size since before the Second World War. Within a few years, we will possess an army of less than 480,000 men and women. It took an army of several million soldiers to lose the Vietnam War. We can only do so much with what we have.

3) WILLPOWER: I am referring here to societal will. Our current army is an all-volunteer force. The vast majority of Americans haven’t the slightest interest in serving in the military, and are perfectly happy to delegate that honor to someone else.

Most people rarely raise their heads from iPhones long enough to notice we’ve been engaged in our nation’s longest war—12 years and counting in Afghanistan. When this fact is brought home to them, they may, if so moved, stick a yellow ribbon on the car, sing “America the Beautiful” during the 7th inning stretch, and personally thank a vet for his or her service.

Someone Else’s Job

Americans like soldiers, they really do, but marching into a recruiter’s office to stand side by side with their “heroes”—that’s someone else’s job. This in itself is a serious constraint on national policy. Want proof?

When the decision was made to turn the tide in Iraq in 2007, we had to grow our ground forces quickly. This was the critical campaign—or so we were told—of the Iraq War. America needed a few thousand extra troops to ensure victory.

No matter, there weren’t enough volunteers to man this all-important “surge.” To meet its goal, the army had to waive its requirement for high school diplomas and let several hundred convicted felons in—most of whom performed admirably, mind you—just to meet basic quotas.

Why do I make so much of these fundamental constraints on American military power? Because I want to start a conversation about sound strategy that has been sadly lacking in Washington, Wall Street, and Main Street alike.

What is strategy, after all, but the sober matching of means to realistic and desirable national ends?

Seen from outer space, or with the benefit of extended hindsight (say, 50 years on), I promise you that American strategy since 2001 will receive a failing grade. The problems didn’t end with George W. Bush, for sure, but the current wars’ original sin does rest with the Bush team. The sin was strategic, and conceptual.

Calling the post-9/11 campaign a “war” against “terror” was a slick way of garnering support for an open-ended military operation. Whatever the motivation, the tragic and seemingly irreversible misstep was Bush’s decision to seek a military solution to what was, at root, a law-enforcement and intelligence problem.

The Al Qaeda camps, leadership, and infrastructure within Afghanistan had to go. No sitting president could have avoided a military commitment in the wake of 9/11.

But expanding the limited, achievable mission of dismantling Al Qaeda in Afghanistan into a broad attempt at “democratic nation-building” was a recipe for failure. Afghanistan’s sheer size, remoteness, ethnic diversity, tortured history and shattered infrastructure should have been grounds for pause.

They were strong proponents of the so-called “light-footprint” approach to military operations. This technologically-obsessed formula eschewed conventional infantry in favor of small Special Forces teams and smart bombs. In practice, this also meant CIA agents doling out suitcases of dollars to local warlords. Some of these tactics worked in the short run, and were not in and of themselves the problem.

The contradiction at the root of our failed strategy became fatally obvious in the winter of 2001: our Special Forces and CIA teams advising the Afghan Northern Alliance had bin Laden and most of his Al Qaeda fighters cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. Bin Laden himself seemed to despair, sending out a last radio message to his followers on Dec. 13, 2001. In a strained voice, he said: “I’m sorry for getting you involved in this battle. If you can no longer resist, you may surrender with my blessing.”

Al Qaeda was all but finished. There was just one problem. The Northern Alliance was a disorganized, divided force that couldn’t encircle the area effectively. Worse still, there were way too few U.S. troops on the ground. What we needed was a brigade of soldiers to seal the border with Pakistan, a request the CIA officer in charge of the agency’s ground forces made.

Rumsfeld, 7,000 miles away in Washington and irrevocably committed to his light-footprint approach, wouldn’t have it. Bin Laden escaped across the mountains to Pakistan. The rest, as they say, is history.

That’s the point. We wasted our opportunity to use a brief, pointed military response to get rid of Bin Laden. And that opened the door for the Bush administration, with most American people willingly in tow, to define the threat of terrorism as a war, which could only be defeated by the military. It was a fatal mistake that threw thousands of American lives, a few trillion dollars, and the stability of an entire region down the drain.

To be fair, the post-9/11 haze of fear and confusion did obscure the nature of the challenge—for both president and citizenry.

Nonetheless, the decision to define the campaign against Al Qaeda as a global war had its roots in the specific ideological obsessions of the Bush team. Many in the administration sensed in 9/11 an opportunity to implement long-discussed plans for a muscular military posture toward Iraq and the Middle East. Others, maybe Bush included, believed that the moment had come for striking a decisive blow in the cosmic struggle between good and evil.

Bush and company insisted that the attack on September 11, 2001, fundamentally altered foreign affairs. Did it though? Was 9/11 really the game-changer we were repeatedly led to believe? Sure, the attack was horrific, unforgiveable, and shocking. But strategists must keep 9/11 in context. This brutal attack was perpetrated by a small group of non-state actors generally centralized in an isolated section of Afghanistan. It took American rhetoric to make the war truly global. What happened next should have been predictable.

Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda fighters were criminals. Numerous, well-armed, and requiring a brief military response, sure, but nonetheless criminals—not a global army or a nation-state. Prolonged intelligence operations, Special Forces raids, an international police manhunt, and a brief military campaign to clean out the Al Qaeda camps—any and all of those were appropriate responses. The fact that we didn’t choose those options set us on the dangerous, slippery path we’ve yet to leave.

***

Let’s review the irony here: the Bush team misjudged the whole problem and then committed the professional military (the American people, of course, were encouraged to go shopping and visit Disney World) to pursue an inappropriate solution. Yet, in the brief moment when we needed significant ground forces to isolate and destroy bin Laden’s network, these ideological techno-hawks refused the necessary troops. Thus, bin Laden escaped, the American people were denied closure, and we had ourselves an open-ended war.

The problem has repeated itself time and again during this, America’s longest shooting war. Strident hawks, generally of Republican persuasion, exaggerate the danger, insist on their pro-military credentials, and increase commitments on our over-taxed military. Then, when competence and prudent strategy are needed most, they fail to deliver. Half the time they don’t even mean what they say.

First off, the “global war on terror” wasn’t really a war. If it were, if the Bush administration’s techno-hawks were actually serious about that, we’d have crossed into Pakistan to sweep the remnants of Al Qaeda out, find bin Laden (it took 10 more years) and capture Mullah Omar (still at large). Instead we toiled away in the mountains, valleys and deserts of a landlocked country, fighting Afghan farmers. When I was in Kandahar province in 2011, nearly all trained Taliban fighters spent the winter resting and re-equipping in Quetta, Pakistan. Everyone knew it. We did nothing and American soldiers died. So it goes.

Our Own Set of Martyrs

There are a number of common counter-arguments. People ask: “Aren’t there extremist Muslims all over the globe, and Don’t ‘failed states’ breed terrorists?” The answers are, respectively, yes, of course, and yes, sort of.

A small minority of radical Islamists has long existed. But they never had the numbers or organization to gather into a credible army, and relatively few ever posed a direct threat to the United States.

And yes, ‘failed states,’ like Somalia, Afghanistan, parts of Yemen, and Syria, among others, can provide extremist safe havens. Even so, how many places can we reasonably fight, and is military force always the best tactic?

The truth is, such places don’t create terrorists nearly as fast as the ongoing, seemingly never-ending U.S. military occupation of Muslim countries. Throw in perpetual imprisonment at Guantanamo with a sprinkling of Abu Ghraib and such, and the scales tip ever farther.

But what matters most is the error at the outset of our “war on terror.” We misjudged the problem and prescribed an improper solution from the opening bell. And early on, when we needed ground troops to cut off bin Laden, the administration failed us. The result was open-ended, indecisive conflict that eventually matched the false Bush rhetoric and became, as prophesied, truly global.

In place of sound strategy, we’ve been handed our own set of martyrs: more than 6,500 dead soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines. Real victory remains unattainable. Then again, we, the professional troops, weren’t appropriately utilized in the first place. That was the original sin. Americans reap what they sow.

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20 responses to “The Original Sin of America’s Post-9/11 Wars”

One more thought. When I was in the Army we were told that we couldn’t pick and choose what war we would fight in. We went where we were ordered to and did our duty. And, as after every war, we have veterans who need help in many areas.

I wonder if Capt. Sjursen has read YOUR book, Russ. (Family of Secrets)
While I appreciate his analysis, I wonder that he has missed the elephant in the room…the fact that 9/11 could not have occurred without government collusion…at the highest levels.

Contained in this load of clap trap are nuggets of truth, Things like the original sin is held by the Bust team, then you get to

‘The Al Qaeda camps, leadership, and infrastructure within Afghanistan had
to go. No sitting president could have avoided a military commitment in
the wake of 9/11’

so immediately I know this guy is ‘selling something’. Whatever, there are some goodies in his bag which leads me to know that the military is a toy in the hands of dangerous minions.

Like a child, when they realize what they have done in the name of sitting congresses, they walk all over the smashed pieces on the way out of the game and then the head tells the hand to put on the boots and the tongue talks us into another catastrophe

we definitely allowed a rube like Bush to push us into two wars for no good reason. even if we just focus on Iraq the think that is must distressing about the American public is that they remain largely untouched by foreign campaigns. There is an occasional moment, like the woman in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 who recruits for the military and then is shocked when her own son is killed. For her it is all a job opportunity, and if her own son had died she would be mostly oblivious to the suffering imposed on Iraqis. I think it also makes for a double edged sword when looking at Hamas. On the one hand we are deeply troubled by the sight of civilian casualties. On the other hand we are completely immune to the notion that our political choices might bring catastrophe. The Palestinians who choose Hamas should know that if they choose to fight a war, it can be incredibly ugly. All war is a failure for the human race. There are no winners, ever, just survivors.

We need to get clear about what flaws in that constitution and the government structure it sets up that lets the owners of banks and corporations use our military to advance their business goals around the world. That is what we need to get clear on. What flaws in our government allow a tiny few to hoodwink the majority and send off their young people to die for natural resource grabs? That is what we have to figure out. It has gone on for far too long. The Spanish-American war should have been the first dead giveaway. We’ve been hoodwinked by the owners of this system ever since.

Resources: Funding, capability, willpower… Always thought The Enemy is underexamined as a resource. With chivalry, he’d be honored to some extent. The current system makes just makes him into a witch (even drowns him at trial), and steals his wallet. But in any case, the giant sucking sound ends if you can’t count on making enemies. Rest assured, though, even if they don’t teach The Enemy As Resource at West Point, there are people who understand it just fine. Obviously, many of those are not our friends. I guess John Stockwell had a book relevant to it.

The good captain is full of the propagandizing the rich have always foisted on the working classes in order to get them to do their bidding. It’s not all about “The Rich’s Self Interests” anymore, if it ever should have been, not if we want to see planetary life survive beyond the dawn of the nuclear or carbon fuel age. To sum up, Sjursen is a stupid fool and is full of it and needs to have his brain de contaminated of corporatism’s imperialism and become re educated in the school of being a universal citizen. Utter archaic militaristic crap I wouldn’t have expected to see Russ Baker publish on his site! Not even the inkling of a twinge of conscience from this doer of evils….certainly not what I would call a hero and decorate with brightly colored ribbons and shiny metal fobs. Spare me please….

Author is selling the ongoing charade as failure/incompetence when in reality it is more likely a deliberate strategy. This article is a better used as an insight into the understanding/premise of a military man’s mindset, as opposed to revealing any deeper “truths”.
His ego dictates that the soldier is a victim of incompetent political leadership, not an unwitting or impotent pawn in service of highly manipulative (competent, in their way) politicians and their corporate masters…case in point…his Viet Nam reference says ” It took an army of several million soldiers to lose the Vietnam War.”
Hogwash.
It took a relatively few communists, and treasonous American leadership. The several million soldiers never stood a chance of “victory”.
I get the whiff of both pride (in military service) and a little contempt (for those who haven’t served), with no acknowledgement that in fact it is the unwitting dupes with all the hardware, and an unwavering obedience to “authority” that enables and perpetuates the either incompetent (as he claims) or treasonous (as I would claim) leadership.

See no evil, hear no evil. Try talking about war or 9/11 or terror and Americans clam up and wave the flag. Yet, they blame ordinary Germans for allowing WW2. The “stay positive” movement allows for so much killing.

I think 9/11 was another in a long line of false flag terrorist attacks and we’ve been in an Operation Gladio type Strategy of Tension world ever since. I’m glad WWW is getting to the root of the issue by discussing this horrific event and its repercussions. Good on you.

I agree completely. There are easily 200 SERIOUS questions about 911 that call into question the USGov Official Conspiracy Theory. In the first place, only the USG itself (or some “wing” within it) had the: means, motive (cui bono) and opportunity to:
1) Do 911 *
2) Do Anthrax **
3) Cover them both up. ***
* For starters, at least 8 of the alleged hijackers were either dead before 911 (one of them) or still alive after it (at least seven of them – who identified themselves and said their identifications had been stolen).
** ONLY TWELVE MEN had access to that military-grade Ames-strain Anthrax. With unlimited money & “need”, how come, after almost 13 years, the USG still hasn’t named which one of those 12 did it?
*** The Bush-ites first stalled the investigation for months and months; while, illegally, “scrubbing” the WTC crime scene – unheard of! Then they set up a rubber-stamp committee of insiders. Then they vastly UNDER-funded (using mostly volunteer investigators). Then THEIR report was worse than useless.